Vendor gets OK to set up his cart

Hot-dog seller with a city permit is told festival will allow it

By Patrick Wilson
Winston-Salem Journal

A hot-dog vendor who was told he couldn’t do business in downtown Winston-Salem during the National Black Theatre festival will be allowed to set up his cart after all.

The theater festival, which has a broad permit to control vending downtown this week, said it intended to allow hot-dog vendors when festival officials talked to the city about the permit.

But Winston-Salem police told Tarus Clark on Tuesday that he couldn’t operate his cart at the corner of Fourth and Cherry streets, where he and his wife have paid a $75 yearly fee to the city to operate.

Police told him he had to shut down because the theater festival controlled vendors, he said.

That was apparently a misunderstanding.

Mayor Allen Joines said yesterday that he talked to theater-festival officials to resolve the situation. Joines got at least one complaint from a citizen criticizing him for allowing Carter to be barred from doing business downtown.

Joines is also a co-chairman of fundraising for this year’s festival.

“I was very concerned about folks thinking I wasn’t sympathetic to a small-business person who is trying to make a living,” Joines said.

I wonder how people got the impression you weren't sympathetic to a small-business person trying to make a living, Mayor Joines??? Maybe it was because you said this yesterday: “The festival is spending money to make it happen.... What is unfair is for him to come in and take advantage of the thousands of people that the theater festival is drawing to that area without contributing to getting those people to come down."

“But as I told people today, the festival was trying to protect their vendors that have paid sums to come in. But I think we’ve worked out a satisfactory compromise that will let everybody participate to the extent that they wanted to.”

What was the compromise??? The NBTF said that it was all a misunderstanding... They had no problem with the individual selling hot dogs. It sounds like the mayor is trying to save face if you ask me.